In a Salon story titled “Cleveland: Ground zero for the housing bubble,” Edward McClelland shares a compelling tale of how the housing collapse hit Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood with a first-hand account from a lifelong resident.

“If houses go to heaven, then Classen Avenue, in the Cleveland neighborhood of Slavic Village, has been the scene of a mass Rapture. Ted Michols watched it all happen. A retired trade magazine editor, a bachelor, a man who likes to sit on his porch and share the neighborhood with passersby he’s known fifty years, Michols has lived his entire life in a little square house his grandfather bought in 1923.”

McClelland writes of Michols experience from the very beginning of the end up to modern day troubles and turmoil in his lengthy feature.

Read the complete piece here.